Cultures of Anyone studies the emergence of collaborative and
non-hierarchical cultures in the context of the Spanish economic crisis
of 2008. It explains how peer-to-peer social networks that have arisen
online and through social movements such as the Indignados have
challenged a longstanding cultural tradition of intellectual elitism and
capitalist technocracy in Spain. From the establishment of a
technocratic and consumerist culture during the second part of the
Franco dictatorship to the transition to neoliberalism that accompanied
the ‘transition to democracy’, intellectuals and ‘experts’ have
legitimized contemporary Spanish history as a series of unavoidable
steps in a process of ‘modernization’. But when unemployment skyrocketed
and a growing number of people began to feel that the consequences of
this Spanish ‘modernization’ had increasingly led to precariousness,
this paradigm collapsed. In the wake of Spain’s financial meltdown of
2008, new ‘cultures of anyone’ have emerged around the idea that the
people affected by or involved in a situation should be the ones to
participate in changing it. Growing through grassroots social movements,
digital networks, and spaces traditionally reserved for ‘high culture’
and institutional politics, these cultures promote processes of
empowerment and collaborative learning that allow the development of the
abilities and knowledge base of ‘anyone’, regardless of their economic
status or institutional affiliations.

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